Early settlers

• Few topics in ancient American history are fraught with as much controversy as the settlement of the Americas
• This controversy isn't anything new
• This is a question for which there's been an unclear answer for centuries
• When Columbus first encountered the Americas in 1492, this question wasn't really on his mind
• He thought he had landed off the coast of Asia and believed that he had encountered the people of the West Indies
• As further Spanish exploration followed up Columbus's fateful expedition, people began to realize that they weren't in Asia, but somewhere completely new, an undiscovered world full of new people and new civilizations
• This episode is meant to be an overview of the topic
• It could be much longer and much more in-depth
• Heck, you could make many episodes about this topic
• There's an elephant in the room that we need to address, and that is how to refer to the indigenous peoples of the Americas as a whole
• Terms used to refer to the indigenous peoples of the Americas

  • Indian
  • Native American
  • Amerindian
  • Indigenous people
• Indian


  Many indigenous people do identify as Indians, although we all know that the name is a misnomer
• Native American

  A good, concise term, but actually, it isn't used that much outside of the United States
• Amerindian

  What gets used a lot in the scientific literature, but that hasn't penetrated very far outside of it
• Indigenous people

  The latest term that's really gaining traction all around
• There isn't a solid consensus, and you can make a case for each term
• The author personally prefers the terms Native American and Indigenous Peoples, and until now, hasn't heard any objection to the terms when used in their videos
• You'll probably hear the term Paleo-Indian a few times as well
• Throughout the centuries, and even today, lots of theories have floated around about the origins of Native Americans
• José de Acosta

  A Jesuit missionary in Mexico who proposed that the indigenous people had migrated to America from Asia, and that there was an unknown land route uniting both continents
• De Acosta's ideas did not take off with the wider public, and instead, a popular theory that the first Americans were descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel took root</b>
• This theory got lots of high-profile endorsement from men like William Penn, Cotton Mather, and Joseph Smith
• Using this theory as a basis, many naturalists concluded that humans must have arrived in America around 3000 BCE
• The turning point came in 1908 when George McJunkin, a former slave-turned-cowboy and self-educated geologist, discovered the skeleton of a bison antiquus in a washed-out gully outside of Folsom, New Mexico
• This was irrefutable proof that humans had co-existed in America with the creatures of the Ice Age
• Folsom points


  Small size, subtle tails, and fluted heads. Unique to North America and not found anywhere else in the world
• Clovis points

  Larger, with a slightly different design. The oldest type of points in the Americas, dating from about 13,500 to 12,900 years BP
• BP

  Before-present, the dating convention used for very old dates
• To convert a date from BP to BPP, just subtract 2,000 years and you'll get the rough BCE date
• Clovis first theory

  The theory that the earliest people arrived in America no earlier than 13,500 years BP, championed by C. Vance Haynes in the 1960s
• Last glacial maximum (LGM)

  A geological event where the Earth was cooler and more water was locked up in the ice caps, stretching across North America and cutting off the interior of the Americas from any contact with Eurasia
• Haynes' theory was that humans had entered Beringea during the last glacial maximum, but were halted from further migration by the glaciers
• When the Earth began to warm back up and the glaciers began to retreat, a lane would have opened up in the ice sheets, allowing people to migrate from Beringea into the unpopulated interiors of the continent to settle the vast landscape
• These areas would have been dominated by mammoths, mastodons, armored rhinos, camelids, horses, and giant sloths
• Once in America, the first Americans continued South and eventually settled in Central and South America
• They needed to settle because the icecap had receded, the ice melted and the ocean covered the land bridge and eventually changed the climate and plant of the Americas
• The animals that these settlers followed died out and so there remained no large animals to feed them
• They began to depend on other things that nature provided
• They began to exchange ideas and to learn from each other. Their way of life changed and was based on subsistence farming, hunting and fishing
• Early settlers were self sufficient